Winton Victorian Championships

This weekends race meeting was for us just a warm up for
the Formula Xtreme series being held here in four weeks time. Honda Australia
with there million dollar budget also took advantage of this meeting to
do some much needed testing. This in turn would give us a good gauge as
to how close we are and opportunity to take it to them.

We continued to make minor adjustments to suspension using
our old tyres from the previous Formula Extreme meeting because we were
short on tyres.At the end of the day we put on a new set of tyres and
posted a best time of 1:26.00.

Saturday Qualifying

For the first qualifier we elected to fit a 190 rear which
we had not had any experience with. Cameron posted a best to of 1:25.60
with three laps consistently in the 1:25 bracket. For the second qualifier
we went back to the 180 rear as Cameron was running wide on corner exit
and was having to work hard to get the bike to turn in.We were not able to improve on the first session with
the final result, qualifying in 3rd. The two factory Honda bikes with 1:24.38
and the second bike with 1:25.50Bear in mind that Michelin were fitting new tyres for
every session and in the second session fitted new rear tyres half way
through the session.

Saturday 4 lap race 500cc to unlimited

This race was a little bit interesting as the Honda boys
decided to run the new 600's, I suspect hoping for an upset victory for
the new bike against the Yamaha R1.

This was not to be and Cameron won easier conserving our
only race tyres for tomorrow.

Sunday race one unlimited 10 laps

Cameron got a great start and lead the field through turn
one followed very closely by Johnson on the first of the factory Honda's.
The two made a clean break from the rest of the field but before one lap
was completed Johnson has crash out of the race and it was stopped. On
the restart Cameron again led through turn one this time with the Factory
Honda of Brooks hot on his tail. The pair pulled a 2 second gap on the
rest of field until Brooks also high sided out of the race braking his
collarbone.

As the tyres had already done a qualifying session the
best of them was gone and Tozer on an R1 using fresh Dunlop's pulled Cameron
in eventually take 1st over the line by 2 seconds.

Unfortunately for Tozer he passed Cameron under a yellow
flag and in the official results for race one was relegated to 2nd place.

Sunday race two unlimited 10 laps

For race 2 we elected to fit the 190 rear which had only
done about 10 laps. Again Cameron was first into turn one but Tozer was
right behind and by lap 2 had taken the lead. Cameron chased hard for 10
laps but had to settle for a safe second, some two and half seconds behind.

Sunday 20 lap Trophy race

Our biggest problem for this race was not having any tyres
left. We elected to stay with the 190 rear which had now done over 20 laps.
The biggest problem was that front tyre had done the 2 qualifying sessions
and 24 laps at race pace. All our other fronts had done just as much work
so the choice was really made for us.

We reversed the front tyre and softened up the suspension.
Cameron again lead the field for 2 laps before Tozer got past. We were
hoping that Tozer would tire and Cameron would then be able to pull him
back in and hopefully take the lead back. But this was not to be, though
the tyres as worn as they were held up very well and by the end of the
race Cameron was still lapping at 1:26's consistently, finishing a comfortable
2nd 15 seconds behind Tozer.

Summary

The weekend was very successful and if nothing else he
found that the Pirelli tyres really do provide long life without dramatic
loss of performance.

I am sure that if we had plenty of fresh tyres the result
would have been different. As we are on a very limited budget and the Formula
Xtreme in our main priority we simply could not afford to burn up a lot
of new tyres. One thing is for sure though, our opposition were very much
aware of us and know that they have got a fight on their hands at the next
Formula Extreme round to be held at the same track in four weeks time.